The Australian sporting community expressed their outrage yesterday at the decision by Athletics Australia to appoint a former East German coach to head the national track and field team. Forbes Carlile, one-time coach of Olympic swimming great Shane Gould and a vocal anti-drugs campaigner, said he was astounded by Ekkart Arbeit's appointment, saying it was possible that a Chinese swimming coach for the Australian swimming team could be next.

"It's a similar situation," Carlile said. "If they could do this then they could do that." The veteran swim coach was alluding to China's sudden emergence as a world swimming power when it won 12 of 16 women's events at the 1994 world championships only to be embarrassed later that year when seven swimmers, including two world champions, tested positive at the Hiroshima Asian Games.

The 56-year-old Arbeit was East Germany's throwing events coach

from 1982-1988 and chief coach of track and field from 1989-1990 - a time when there was systematic use of performance-enhancing drugs among the country's athletes.

Dual Olympic swimming gold medallist Kieren Perkins said the appointment threatened to mar Athletics Australia's reputation internationally.

"After the Dean Capobianco situation, I think there's a bit of a cloud over Australian athletics anyway," Perkins said, referring to sprinter Capobianco's suspension for testing positive to anabolic steroids in the run-up to last year's Atlanta Olympics.

Arbeit, who has been appointed through to the Sydney 2000 Olympics and beyond, has admitted to the Australian media that he oversaw his team in an era of East German sport where drugs were commonplace.

Australian athletics icon Raelene Boyle, who lost track events at the 1972 Olympic Games to East German athletes later found to have taken steroids, said "It's a backward step."

Thailand will have two military planes on standby during the Southeast Asian Games in Jakarta this month to rescue athletes overcome by the smog choking Indonesia, officials said yesterday.